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Self-denial   /sɛlf-dɪnˈaɪəl/   Listen
Self-denial

noun
1.
The trait of practicing self discipline.  Synonym: self-discipline.
2.
The act of denying yourself; controlling your impulses.  Synonyms: self-control, self-discipline.
3.
Renunciation of your own interests in favor of the interests of others.  Synonyms: abnegation, denial, self-abnegation, self-renunciation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Self-denial" Quotes from Famous Books



... native of Sinope in Pontus, who was born B.C. 412, was one of his few disciples; he came at an early age to Athens, and became notorious for the most frantic excesses of moroseness and self-denial. On a voyage to AEgina he was taken by pirates and sold as a slave to Xeniades, a Corinthian, over whom he acquired great influence, and was made tutor to his children. His system consisted merely in teaching ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... spoilt," said Elsa. "He's perhaps not spoilt in one way, but in another he is. He has never known any hardships or been forced into any self-denial. Great-uncle," she went on earnestly, "if it's true that we have lost or are going to lose nearly all our money, won't it perhaps be a good thing ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth

... she perceived the great object of her anxiety amend also; and the sense she entertained of her late danger, the gratitude she felt for the kindness she had been treated with, and, above all, the self-denial to which she perceived her young lady accustomed herself, in order to recover, induced her henceforward to become temperate in her use of food, and tractable as to the means necessary for preserving her health, and to ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland

... culture gay, Stern self-denial, or sharp penance wan! Well might each heart be happy in that day— For Gods, the Happy Ones, were kin to Man! The Beautiful alone, the Holy there! No pleasure shamed the Gods of that young race; So that the chaste Camoenae favouring were, And the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... crimson, and meandered in azure over the lovely neck and bosom of the fair Fleming. There was nothing in the manner of the Constable towards his nephew and his bride, which could infer a regret of the generous self-denial which he had exercised in favour of their youthful passion. But he soon after accepted a high command in the troops destined to invade Ireland; and his name is found amongst the highest in the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... forms of romance, giving them at once a complacent tone of clerical dignity, and an agreeable dash of heretical impudence; while the inculcated doctrine has the double advantage of needing no laborious scholarship for its foundation, and no painful self-denial ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... whom you intend to make use. This distinction between virtue and goodness is not understood in England: hence the poverty of our drama in heroes. Our stage attempts at them are mere goody-goodies. Goodness, in its popular British sense of self-denial, implies that man is vicious by nature, and that supreme goodness is supreme martyrdom. Not sharing that pious opinion, I have not given countenance to it in any of my plays. In this I follow the precedent of the ancient myths, which represent the hero as vanquishing ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw

... it too much trouble to murmur flatteries in great ladies' ears; he came where morning, noon, and night the inexorable demands of rigid rules compelled his incessant obedience, vigilance, activity, and self-denial. He had known nothing from his childhood up except an atmosphere of amusement, refinement, brilliancy, and idleness; he came where gnawing hunger, brutalized jest, ceaseless toil, coarse obscenity, agonized ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... Nelly has deserved all the praise and love which she has won," sighed the disappointed Matty, her jealousy conquered by the example of generous self-denial which she saw in ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... his rule the order of Jesuits began to exist, and grew rapidly to the full measure of his gigantic powers. With what vehemence, with what policy, with what exact discipline, with what dauntless courage, with what self-denial, with what forgetfulness of the dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their Church, is written in every ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... can hold its own with London, Paris, and New York," he said. "However, if you're fond of diamonds and such ornaments, there's no reason you should exercise much self-denial." ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... farmers and mechanics, the upright mothers and fathers, the sweet though humble homes, the conscientious Christian citizens, in whose influence and leadership lies the hope of the African race. It finds its testimonial in the loyalty and devotion of its missionaries, their self-denial for the cause they love. It has seen a gifted woman from a home of comfort going year by year for twenty years to this work of emancipation for the "bound" in Georgia and Tennessee, among a despised people, and, when called from earth and earth's opportunities, ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various

... impossible to tell how the sense of Esclairmonde's trust, and of the resolute self-denial it would require of him, elevated Malcolm's whole tone, and braced his mind. The taking away of his original high purpose had rendered him as aimless and pleasure-loving as any ordinary lad; but the situation in which he now stood—guarding this saintly being for her chosen ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Ulster members to take this opportunity of trying to secure for their constituents freedom from this iniquitous measure. It would be merely a dog-in-the-manger policy for those who lived outside Ulster to grudge relief to their co-religionists merely because they could not share it. Such self-denial on Ulster's part would in no way help them (the Southerners) and it would only injure their ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... mansion, which was to have been a testimonial of esteem from admiring friends; though all these fade before me like the beautiful mirage that proves only an illusion of the senses, yet I am equal to this act of self-denial, and submit to pass my life in ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... Laura admitted. "Think of the struggle, the self-denial, and never a soul to tell ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... it not bring before you for the working and industrious classes? Why, gentlemen, it represents the blighted hopes for life of many a family. It represents the small sum set apart by honest, frugal, persevering industry, won by years of toil and self-denial, in the hope of its being, as it has been in many cases before, the foundation even of colossal fortunes which have been made from smaller sums. It represents the gradual decay of the hopes for his family of many an industrious artisan. The first step in that ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... in his tastes that he spent very little upon himself, and while he could say "No" to impudence, he had ever a quick, warm "Yes" for need. That he should be able to become an artist had been the top of his dream; that by a very little self-denial he could help others to remain artists, left him large-eyed at his own good fortune. He experienced the glowing happiness that only the generous ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... Shelton, placing some garments in the bath-room, invited his visitor to make himself at home. While the latter, then, was doing this, Shelton enjoyed the luxuries of self-denial, hunting up things he did not want, and laying them in two portmanteaus. This done, he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... another, then to five hundred persons at one time, and a flourishing and aggressive institution founded upon this his appearance, and numbers of persons giving up their property, and breaking with all their friends, and adopting a new religion, and a new course of life of great self-denial, and even encountering bitter persecution and death, simply because they believed this man to be alive from the dead, and moreover some professing to do miracles, and to confer the power of doing miracles in the name and by the power of ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... glow of warm color in her hair, the brightness of her smile, and the softness he had once or twice seen in her violet eyes. Then he drove these thoughts away; to indulge in them would only make the self-denial he must ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... from the beauty of Nature around them. How can they help but think of the Creator when they dwell so near the primal source of life. The crystal waters of the lake will teach them purity, the leaves of the trees will rustle messages of self-denial, and the majestic mountains will speak to them of endurance and courage, a religion which dwells in Nature until they, "like Moses, will see in the bushes the radiant Deity and know they are treading on ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... is the first law of nature, and I fear it is in vain to expect that persons not under the influence of religious principles will risk their lives, or submit to much self-denial, for the sake of alleviating the miseries of others. The reason given for this separation was, that it was impossible to procure food for so large a number, and that they would be more likely to obtain sustenance when divided. The party who thus proceeded in advance encountered the ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... it so"; and it is well for us in most cases to enjoy Shakspeare in the same pious way,—to smell a rose without bothering ourselves about its having been made expressly to serve the turn of the essence-peddlers of Shiraz. We yield the more credit to Mr. White's self-denial in this respect, because his notes prove him to be capable of profound as well as delicate and sympathetic exegesis. Shakspeare himself has left us a pregnant satire on dogmatical and categorical esthetics ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... Mr. Trelawny, you may know—or rather you do not know or you would not have so construed my remark—is a scholar, a very great scholar. He has worked for years toward a certain end. For this he has spared no labour, no expense, no personal danger or self-denial. He is on the line of a result which will place him amongst the foremost discoverers or investigators of his age. And now, just at the time when any hour might bring him success, he ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... it is incumbent upon the musician to cultivate a high standard of physical health. This does not mean the maximum of nourishment, combined with stimulants to compel a jaded appetite: on the contrary, artistic efficiency demands super-cleanliness and a tolerably rigid self-denial. Girth is no measure of artistic ability. But the body, sound or otherwise, is the instrument through which we play life's little tune, just as the pianist plays through his pianoforte. But when we have closed the pianoforte nobody supposes that we have extinguished the artist, or annihilated the ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... And yet more strongly, and, as it may still seem to many minds, with convincing reason, he objected to an eleemosynary system, which "precludes the poor mother from the strongest motive human nature can be actuated by for industry, for forethought, and self-denial." "The Spartan," he said, "and other ancient communities, might disregard domestic ties, because they had the substitution of country, which we cannot have. Our course is to supplant domestic attachments, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... was tempted to throw herself in his arms and confess all. The high resolves of years of self-denial were on the verge of being broken in one weak moment; but the very peril, the very temptation calmed her suddenly. She brushed away her tears, and, gently withdrawing the hand Maurice held, said, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... unswerving admonitions to consider the vanity of earthly treasures, and to prepare for death—which had sounded so unreal amidst the perfumed elegances of the chateau, came back now with a reality gained from experiment. The daily life of self-denial, the conversation garnished from Scripture and from the Fathers, had not, after all, been mere priestly affectations. In no symbolic manner, but literally, he had "watched for the coming of his Lord," and "taken up the cross daily;" and so, when the cross was laid ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... me this involves considerable self-denial and patience. I do not flinch. From you it demands unceasing devotion to your books, your studies, your researches. You are no longer a boy: you are a man. The idle sports of youth must be placed behind you. Stern life must be ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... its tedium was beguiled by the most fervent love-letters between the boy of sixteen and his mother. The sorrow of this separation, George says, metamorphosed the sickly, spoiled child into a fervent and resolute youth, whose subsequent career was full of courage and self-denial. Of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... in her purse, conscious that it meant self-denial on the lad's part, but knowing that she would hurt his pride irreparably did she refuse to ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... I was sadly out of place. I am satisfied that this game of tennis has nothing of the fascinating quality of croquet. On our arrival home Phyllis kissed me, and thanked me for what she called my "self-denial," but after that one experience Frederick represented me at the tennis-court, as, indeed, the good-natured boy consented to do ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field

... the father; so that Abel's existing animus might perish. Both Estelle and Ernest Churchouse had impressed the view upon her; but here crept in the personal factor, and Sabina found that she had no real desire to mend the relationship. Considerations of her child's future pointed to more self-denial, but only that Abel might in time come to be reconciled to Raymond and accept good at his hands. And when Sabina thought upon this, she soon saw that her own indifference, where Ironsyde was concerned, did not extend to the future of the boy. She could still feel, and still suffer, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... towards George which had once kept Miriam awake had also kept her from him in a great effort of self-denial, and it was many days since she had done more than wave a greeting or give him ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... contributing anything herself to her innumerable schemes except a lavish expenditure of pens and ink and paper with which to set forth her appeals. Yet in this she is a true altruist. For she knows and tells everybody how delightful and blessed it is to give, and accordingly in the purest spirit of self-denial she permits her friends to dispense the cash, whilst she herself is satisfied with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various

... work and self-denial he had saved a little sum toward his old age. It amounted to a few hundred pounds. It was all he had. He decided to devote that sum toward the making of his nephew, Lloyd George, an educated man, toward putting him in a profession where he ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... He consented to wait; but I did not tell Verry what I had done. All the houses he owned, lots, carriages, horses, domestic stock, the fields lying round our house—were sold. When he began to sell, the fury of retrenchment seized him, and he laid out a life of self-denial for us three. Arthur's ten thousand dollars were safe, who was therefore provided for. He would bring wood and water for us; the rest we must do, with Fanny's help. We could dine in the kitchen, and put our beds in one room; by shutting up the house in ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... this liberality towards the weak, in social life, corresponds to that respect for the minority, in political life, which is the essence of freedom. It is an application of the same principle of self-denial, and of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... Morrissey had bought her first cautious bill of Featherlooms. Her love for Emma McChesney had much of the maternal in it. She felt a personal pride in Emma McChesney's work, her success, her clean reputation, her life of self-denial for her son Jock. When Ethel Morrissey was planned by her Maker, she had not been meant to be wasted on the skirt-and-suit department of a small-town store. That broad, gracious breast had been planned as a resting-place ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber

... work out its own salvation. We have every desire to help. But with all our resources we are powerless to save unless our efforts meet with a constructive response. The situation in our own country and all over the world is one Chat can be improved only by bard work and self-denial. It is necessary to reduce expenditures, increase savings and liquidate debts. It is in this direction that there lies the greatest hope of domestic tranquility and international peace. Our own country ought to finish the leading example in this effort. Our past adherence to this ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... and gross example of this misuse of the will may be observed in men or women who follow vigorously and ostentatiously paths of self-sacrifice which they have marked out for themselves, while overlooking entirely places where self-denial is not only needed for their better life, but where it would add greatly to the happiness and ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call

... were trials. Some of the young men in the Harpoot Seminary refused to exercise the self-denial necessary to live on the means allowed for their support, and returned to their homes; and a few of the graduating class preferred to enter secular business, rather than accept the salary offered. This was not without its uses, as it confirmed a wholesome ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... "Thank God" when they get what they want; as if it amused God to plague them, and was a vast piece of self-denial on His part to give them what they liked. But I, who am a simple person, thank God when He hurts me, because I don't think he likes it any more than I do; but I can't praise Him, because—I don't understand why—I can only ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin

... which was well sustained by them. There was one missionary who commanded my especial respect and admiration. I refer to the Rev. Mr. William C. Burns, a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman. He led a life of consecrated self-denial, living exclusively with the natives and dressing in the Chinese garb which, with his Caucasian features and blond complexion, caused him to present the drollest appearance. Only those who have resided in China can understand the repugnance with which anyone ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... daughter, which was very easily squandered by one of her temper. She was both luxurious and generous, devoted to her pleasures, and seemed to have taken Lord Rochester's resolution of avoiding all sorts of self-denial. She had a greater vivacity in conversation than ever I knew in a German of either sex. She loved reading, and had a taste of all polite learning. Her humour was easy and sociable. Her constitution inclined ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... pusillanimity, out of fear of being signalized as a pornographic writer; finally from the apprehension that our gossiping criticism will identify the artistic work of the writer with his personal life and will start rummaging in his dirty linen. Or perhaps they can find neither the time, nor the self-denial, nor the self-possession to plunge in head first into this life and to watch it right up close, without prejudice, without sonorous phrases, without a sheepish pity, in all its monstrous simplicity and everyday activity... That material... is truly unencompassable ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... that he is fond of him. And you would not wonder at my regard, if you only knew what a pure-minded, noble fellow this Cormac is,—so thoughtful, so self-sacrificing, for, you know, it must have cost him—it would cost any one—a terrible effort of self-denial to dwell in such a solitude as this for the sole purpose of nursing a stranger, and that stranger a doomed leper, as I thought at first, though God has seen fit ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... could misunderstand that. By no means cordial—but of course not!" Carrington reflected. His own handsome face had been expressionless when he returned her bow, and Betty could not have guessed how consoled and comforted he was by it. With great fortitude and self-denial he forbore to look in her direction again, but he lingered at the table until the last moment that he might watch her when she returned to the coach. Mr. Carrington entertained ideals where women were concerned, and even though he ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... Poland, or the least respect or pity for her as a dying Anarchy, is what nobody will claim for him; consummate talent in executing the Partition of Poland (inevitable some day, as he may have thought, but is nowhere at the pains to say),—great talent, great patience too, and meritorious self-denial and endurance, in executing that Partition, and in saving IT from catching fire instead of being the means to quench fire, no well-informed person will deny him. Of his difficulties in the operation (which truly are unspeakable) I will say nothing more; readers are prepared ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... connected. History gives us examples of every kind of virtue, and every kind of talent, united with every species of fanaticism that has afflicted civilised life. It follows not that we applaud the fanaticism. The early caliphs were several of them distinguished by exalted virtues, temperance, self-denial, justice, patriotism: we praise these virtues, we acknowledge, too, that they are here linked with the profession of the faith of Islam; but for all this we do not admire the religion of Mahomet, nor that fanaticism which writ ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... Self-denial surely means something far greater than some slight insignificant lessening of our self-indulgences! When Peter denied CHRIST, he utterly disowned Him and disallowed His claims. In this way we are called to deny self, and to do it daily, if we would be CHRIST's ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor

... all able-bodied men appearing in dervish garb were to be seized for military service. The profession fell out of fashion then, and there are now comparatively few mendicant dervishes to be seen. Those that still wear the 'ragged robe' do not all appear to follow the rules of poverty, self-denial, abstinence, and celibacy. One there was, a negro from 'darkest Africa,' who attached himself as a charity-pensioner to the British Legation in Tehran, and was to be seen in all weathers, snow and sunshine, fantastically dressed, chattering ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon

... and hewing logs for plank, as they were going to make the water of the river split the logs and hew them at the same time; it was claimed that this surrender on the part of the Indians, would be but a just offset against the self-denial, great expense, and severe labor of the whites, in establishing so benign an institution as a saw mill, in these western wilds. This is one among many instances of the benevolence of the white man ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... mightiest hunger. Who calls a man selfish because he is hungry? He is selfish if he broods on the pleasures of eating, and would not go without his dinner for the sake of another; but if he had no hunger, where would be the room for his self-denial? Besides, in spiritual things, the only way to give them to your neighbors is to hunger after them yourself. There each man is a mouth to the body of the whole creation. It can not be selfishness to hunger and ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... other, without Injustice to any other; it is ever want of Breeding or Courage to be brow-beaten or elbow'd out of his honest Ambition. I have said often, Modesty must be an Act of the Will, and yet it always implies Self-Denial: For if a Man has an ardent Desire to do what is laudable for him to perform, and, from an unmanly Bashfulness, shrinks away, and lets his Merit languish in Silence, he ought not to be angry at the World that a more unskilful Actor succeeds in his Part, because he has not Confidence to come ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... with a little groan. The mockery of his life of ceaseless toil seemed suddenly to spread itself out before him, a grim and unlovely jest. What if his strength should go? What if all this labour and self-denial should be in vain? He found himself growing giddy at ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... all, let us keep nearer to our Master, and live more in fellowship with our Lord, and that will help us to deny ourselves to ungodliness and worldly lusts. It is the prevalence of these, and the absence of self-denial, that ruins most of the Christian lives that are ruined in this world. If a man wants to be what he is not, he must cease to be what ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... passion of hatred would grow with power; and the Spaniards would be wretched. They are now under my protection. I must give them a governor who cannot hate; and therefore I send you. Your love of our people and of me, my brother, will rouse you to exertion and self-denial. For the rest you shall have able counsellors on the spot. For your private guidance, I shall be ever at your call. Confide wholly in me, and your ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... all our hearts good, we are not allowed to have it; it would make us too comfortable, and prevent us from shivering and shrinking as we look, and the artist, with admirable intention, and most meritorious self-denial, expresses his piece of wreck with a dark, cold brown. Now we think this aim and effort worthy of the highest praise, and we only wish the lesson were taken up and acted on by our other artists; but Mr. Fielding ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... curiosity, her interest in everything, and the just enough of receptive intelligence, which is more agreeable than cleverness, had made her the most pleasant companion he had ever known. It was not an exercise of self-denial, of virtue on his part, as the Dowager and indeed many other of his friends had attempted to make out, but a real pleasure in her society. He had liked to talk to her, to tell her his own past history (selections from it), to like, yet laugh at her simple ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... wrongs of the poor and the oppressed against the tyranny of the rich and the powerful; his name has been honored and his manly deeds have been lauded in prose and verse by thousands in many lands for many centuries, exciting doubtless many a noble deed of self-denial, and spurring to the forefront many a popular act of patriotic daring. In Switzerland certainly this picturesque representative of liberty has done much to mould the political life, if not also to write many pages of the history of the people, and that in spite of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... after a pause, making a great effort of self-denial, "I am afraid you oughtn't to go out to get these things for me. Pray don't, mamma, if you think it will do you harm. I would rather go without them; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... moment my poor wife lost all her courage, and regretted she had ever given her consent; but when Lucien saw the tears which his departure had called forth, he became heroic in his self-denial, throwing aside his hat ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... captain of the Eastern Star had introduced those three,—who had never seen each other before—and told them that they would spend many months together among savages in the midst of terrestrial beauty, surrounded by mingled human depravity and goodness, self-denial and cruelty, fun and tragedy such as few men are fated to experience, they would have smiled at each other with good-natured scepticism and regarded their ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... chamber-chaplain, Who hunts for crabs and ballads in maids' sleeves, I, who have shuffled kingdoms. Oh! 'tis easy To beget great deeds; but in the rearing of them— The threading in cold blood each mean detail, And furzebrake of half-pertinent circumstance— There lies the self-denial. ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... sinister black bar from the world's shield of civilisation. Stop, my lads; you shall cheer directly. Dance, Fillot, and Bannock stand next for promotion, and I thank them publicly for setting so brave an example with their messmates, of patient self-denial, obedience, and sterling British manly pluck ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... young people showed much self-denial to be willing to forego the early pleasures of the ball, as they had to do, and give up the time when others were dancing to being dressed, wigged, powdered, and painted. I had to put four rooms at their disposal, two for the ladies with their maids, one for the gentlemen and their valets, and ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... looked fixedly at the boy, pleading for a burden which would necessitate toil, and self-denial, and patience of no ordinary kind and never had he despised himself more than he did then, when, believing what he did believe, he ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... from the earth, as having no proper use? All the evil in it will surely be removed, but the good will remain. At present it is one of the stubborn obstructions in your thorny path. If your way were to be suddenly made smooth and easy your race would never learn self-denial, the only road that leads to a higher state. Your present imperfect life is a daily conflict, and it is only by battles won and temptations overcome that you will ever be built up ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... holy man," resumed the king, "that need has again arisen for the exercise of fortitude and self-denial on thy part. A powerful enemy has invaded my dominions, and has impiously presumed to discomfit my troops. Well might I feel dismayed, were it not for the consolations of religion; but my trust is in thee, O spiritual father! It is ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... will be an objective point for educational work among them. If we already have 300 pupils, the opportunity will then be enlarged many fold. But even now we need more help. Cannot the friends at home enter upon a course of self-denial to ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various

... but he was well known to the poor inhabitants without, by repeated acts of charity and kindness, though he sedulously shunned all social intercourse, and was remarked for the austere discipline, and rigid self-denial to which ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... defect. And I lay it on the consciences of all that listen to me now to see to it that they do their parts as members of this body politic of England. A great heritage has come down from our fathers; pass it on bettered by your self-denial and your efforts. And remember that the way to mend a kingdom is to begin by mending yourselves, and letting Christ's kingdom come in your own hearts. Next we are bound to try to further its coming in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... all the incarnations of this kind that God has hitherto taken, the greatest and most solemn was that in which he appeared thirty centuries ago in Kachemire, under the name of Fot or Beddou, to preach the doctrines of self-denial and self-annihilation." ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... he took these freedoms with me, it did not go to that which they call the last favour, which, to do him justice, he did not attempt; and he made that self-denial of his a plea for all his freedoms with me upon other occasions after this. When this was over, he stayed but a little while, but he put almost a handful of gold in my hand, and left me, making a thousand protestations of his passion for me, and of ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... the world, with little less precision than certain vices signify their presence by a tobacco-tainted breath, beer-bloated body, rum-emblazoned nose, and kindred manifestations. They coddle themselves instead of practicing self-denial, and appear to think that the chief end of life is gratification, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other devotional music; and in which the worship of Mammon or Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchant rising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled in the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers. But, with every allowance that can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, the fact remains the same, that by ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... its use was confined to the priests, when, in noticing their mode of life, he mentions a half cylinder of well polished wood "sufficing to support their head," as an instance of their simplicity and self-denial. For the rich they were made of Oriental alabaster, with an elegant grooved or fluted shaft, ornamented with hieroglyphics, carved in intaglio, of sycamore, tamarisk, and other woods of the country; the poor classes being contented with ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... have escaped with so gentle an admonition, returned to Lantza to resume his command. He was indeed more circumspect than in the past; but he found and seized the occasion to revenge himself on the town for the compulsory self-denial the Emperor had imposed on him. On his arrival he found in the suburbs a large number of recruits who had come from Paris in his absence; and it occurred to him to make them all enter the town, alleging that it was indispensable they should be drilled under his own eyes. This was an enormous ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... dollars a year is a very trifling matter, but it made all the difference between comfort and self-denial to the two old spinsters Their manner of life had been so rigid and careful that it was difficult to economize any further, and the blow had fallen just when it was most inconvenient, for Rebecca's school and boarding expenses, small ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... influence seemed to have somewhat allayed her father's nervousness, and a calmer, more equable mood seemed to have come over him, as his state of health daily improved. But the nameless shadow of a hidden grief seemed to hang over him. For his wants he needed but little; self-denial and sacrifice had grown to be a second nature to him, his one earthly wish seeming to be to have a house where he and Carmen could live alone together; but as regards others, he was open-handed and generous to help wherever it was needed. It was a very difficult matter to find ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus

... an old man—the only man I ever loved with a devotion that has never faded, though long years have passed away since he died. His calm blue eyes look down upon me, and I look into them, and through them I look into a golden memory—into a life of self-denial—into a meek, toiling, honest, heroic Christian manhood—into an uncomplaining spirit—into a grateful heart—into a soul that never sighed over a lost joy, though all his earthly enterprises miscarried. The tracery of care and of sickness is upon his haggard features, but I see in them, and in ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... solemnity. Slowly bending, body and soul, she communed with her own heart and was still, until it burned within her, and the supplication came. When she rose from her knees, she was resigned in all things to God's will, no matter what self-denial it involved; and she was not unhappy. For, O believe this truth, the saddest thing under the sky is a soul incapable of sadness! Most blessed are those souls who are capable of lodging so great a guest as Sorrow, who know how to regret, and ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... soul—man only worketh that salvation out in the Christian life. To break off from known sin; to renounce all self-righteousness; to cast ourselves in loving faith on the merits of Christ crucified; to commence at once a life of self-denial, of prayer, of obedience; to turn from all that God forbids, resolutely and earnestly, unto all that God requires—this is what the text implies. But then this is not salvation. Salvation is of God—of grace—of free grace. From the germ to the fruit, from foundation ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody

... love, for that much is forgiven. And what matter can be found in the soul for humility to work by so well, as by a sight that I have been and am an abominable sinner? And the same is to be said of patience, meekness, gentleness, self-denial, or of any other grace. Grace takes occasion by the vileness of the man to shine the more; even as by the ruggedness of a very strong distemper or disease, the virtue of the medicine is best made manifest. Where ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan

... hated a married priest even more than he hated a monk. The Welsh priest, he says, was wont to keep in his house a female (focaria) "to light his fire but extinguish his virtue." "How can such a man practice frugality and self-denial with a house full of brawling brats, and a woman for ever extracting money to buy costly robes with long skirts trailing in the dust?" Gerald hated women—the origin of all evil since the world began: observing that in birds of prey the females are stronger than the males, he ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... question. I need not tell such an assembly that there are joys of the intellect as well as joys of the body, or that these pleasures of the spirit constituted the reward of our great investigators. Led on by the whisperings of natural truth, through pain and self-denial, they often pursued their work. With the ruling passion strong in death, some of them, when no longer able to hold a pen, dictated to their friends the last results of their labours, and then rested from them ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... strong memory, good judgment, and much given to self-denial. It is said of him, that, under his hidings in a cave, near or about his own house, he wrote out all the new testament; which probably (according to some accounts) might be a transcription of an old copy, which one of his ancestors ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... the number was confusing, and the most curious of the men who worked under him could not come to any satisfying conclusion. All they knew was that he worked harder than any common miner, that his reserve was unbroken, and his life one continual self-denial. There were thirty men in all who worked for him, and by them all he was respected and feared rather than liked. There was a chilling reserve wrapped about him, an utter absence of ingenuousness and frankness ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... Juvinell has one fault in the world, it is his unreasonable partiality for snowy linen. But, were we to go on with our praises and commendations of this best of men, we should fill a large volume full to overflowing, and still leave the better half unsaid: so we must exercise a little self-denial, and forego such pleasing thoughts for the present, as it now behooves us to bring our minds to bear upon matters we have more nearly ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... an Englishman, too pliable for a Spaniard, too lively for a Dutchman, too cordial for an Italian, too modest for a Russian—a man pressing towards me with oblique bows, and doing homage with ineffable self-denial to all that seems of rank; then my heart, and the blood in my face, says, 'that is thy countryman.'" How true! and how often have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various

... room. The miser who starves himself and dies without an ounce of flesh on his bones, while his skinny head lies on a bag of gold, is after all, respectable. There has been a grand passion in his life, and that grandest work of man, self-denial. You cannot altogether despise one who has clothed himself with rags and fed himself with bone-scrapings, while broadcloth and ortolans were within his easy reach. But there are women, wives and mothers of families, who would give the ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... insinuates himself in the esteem of all the companies he comes in; and if he gets nothing else by it, the pleasure he receives in reflecting on the applause which he knows is secretly given him, is to a proud man more than equivalent for his former self-denial, and overpays self-love, with interest, the loss it sustained ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... father always supplied her bountifully with spending money; Gypsy's stock was small. When Joy wanted to make a present, she had only to ask for a few extra dollars, and she had them. Gypsy always felt as if a present given in that way were no present; unless a thing cost her some self-denial, or some labor, she reasoned, it had nothing to do with her. If given directly out of her father's pocket, it was ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... way that admiration which all feel for acts of self-denial done for the good of others, and tending even towards the destruction of the actor, could hardly be accounted for on Darwinian principles alone; for self-immolators must but rarely leave direct descendants, while the community they benefit must by their destruction ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... beauties. She was a perfectly honest, conscientious woman, who had performed duties in her day from whose severe anguish many a human Peri, gazelle-eyed, silken-tressed, and silver-tongued, would have shrunk appalled. She had passed alone through protracted scenes of suffering, exercised rigid self-denial, made large sacrifices of time, money, health for those who had repaid her only by ingratitude, and now her main—almost her sole—fault ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... named Hallam, more than once gravely observed, they were, by their disciplined and military habits, singularly qualified to maintain. Though the Puritan secretly chafed under this protracted visit, habitual self-denial, and a manner so long subdued, enabled him to conceal his disgust. For the first two days after the alarm, the deportment of his guests was unexceptionable. All their faculties appeared to be engrossed with keen and anxious watchings of the forest, out of which it would ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... tenderness for Hazel and her following crept into his sermon. He spoke of the power of protection as almost the greatest good in life, the finest work. He said it was the inevitable reward of self-sacrifice, and that, if one were ready for self-denial, one could protect the ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... as soldiers, existed only for the State, and to the State every thing was subordinate. In our times, the State is made for the people; in Sparta, the people for the State. This generated an intense patriotism and self-denial. It also permitted a greater interference of the State in personal matters than would now be tolerated in any despotism in Europe. It made the citizens submissive to a division of property, which if not a perfect community ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... of wealth, a universal pressure for money was felt; not enough for common expenses; the price of all property down; the country drooping and languishing; towns and cities decaying, and the frugal habits of the people pushed to the verge of universal self-denial for the preservation of their ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... to himself. Any cost? he asked— and reflected. Yes, he answered himself—even the cost of giving her to a better man. The thing was sure to come, he thought—nor thought without a keen pang, scarcely eased by the dignity of the self-denial that would yield her with a smile. But such a crisis was far away, and there was no necessity for now contemplating it. Indeed, there was no certainty it would ever arrive; it was only a possibility. The child was not beautiful, although to ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... lesson. But we must hope that some may be saved even if they have not practised at all times that grand self-denial. Who comes up to that teaching? Do you not wish for, nay, almost demand, instant pardon for any trespass that you may commit,—of temper, or manner, for instance? and are you always ready to forgive in that way yourself? Do you not writhe with indignation at being wrongly judged by others ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... the necessaries of life at the mines, also to the fact that a great many of the gold seekers were clever, educated people, quite unused to extreme poverty, and therefore lacking in the strength that comes from self-denial. ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini

... tried to interest the working people themselves in it? If they are to value its benefits, it ought to cost them something—self-denial, privation even." ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... of the god Shiva. This prediction awakens her father's pride, and also his impatience, since Shiva makes no advances. For the destined bridegroom is at this time leading a life of stern austerity and self-denial upon a mountain peak. Himalaya therefore bids his daughter wait upon Shiva. She does so, but without being able to ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... the speaker, full of a heavy, pertinacious admiration. You might have told him of the noblest action of generosity or self-denial that ever constituted the stock in trade of a moral hero, and he would have listened patiently, but without one responsive emotion. Bodily prowess and daring he could appreciate. Keene's physical prestige was just the thing to captivate his limited imagination; besides which the ground was prepared ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... commodities that cost little may be set down as worth but little. All our blessings may be rated in the same way. If they come easily, without great cost of effort or sacrifice, their value to us is not great. But if we can get them only through self-denial, tears, anguish, and pain, we may be sure that they hide in them the very gold of God. So it is that many of our best and richest blessings come to us in some form ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... of the chief. A daughter of an honorable family, she married a young man at Pisa, her native city, who proved to be captain of this band of robbers. She could not well leave the company into which she had been betrayed; and so, with a noble self-denial, she became resigned to her hard lot. An unwilling witness of the many crimes of her husband and his companions, she suffered cruelly in her resignation. Yet her fidelity, her virtue,—things rarely known, but sometimes respected among these mountain brigands,—had given her a moral power over ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... have been a genius of the first water, but he was at least wise enough to know that he could not both have his cake and eat it. His discovery of Jeffreys' villainy was a most appetising cake, and it wanted some little self-denial to keep his own counsel about it, and not spoil sport by springing his mine until all ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... graziers cheerfully yielded all demanded of them! And how the women wrought—how soft hands that had never worked before plied the ceaseless needle through the tough fabric—how taper fingers packed the boxes for camp, full from self-denial at home—shall shine down all history as the brightest page in story of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... letters that as I grew older I began to be a greater comfort. This is what she writes in 1876: "Even Therese is anxious to make sacrifices. Marie has given her little sisters a string of beads on purpose to count their acts of self-denial. They have really spiritual, but very amusing, conversations together. Celine said the other day: 'How can God be in such a tiny Host?' Therese answered: 'That is not strange, because God is Almighty!' 'And what does Almighty mean?' 'It means that He can do ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... Queens were very jealous that the youngest amongst them should by forethought and self-denial have saved her baby's life, they could say nothing; for, as the young mother had told them, they received their full share. And though at first they disliked the handsome little boy, he soon proved so useful to them, that ere long they all looked on him as their son. Almost as soon ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... that she pinched herself for their sakes; as far as they knew, she had enough, and her self-denial was not allowed to throw a shadow over their young lives, by the thought that their mother was starving herself ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford

... be what you will make us; Make us wise, and make us good! Make us strong for time of trial, Teach us temperance, self-denial, ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham

... too, with a voice which will be heard. I am sure no man is more zealously attached than I am to the privileges of this House, particularly in regard to the exclusive management of money. The Lords have no right to the disposition, in any sense, of the public purse; but they have gone further in self-denial[46] than our utmost jealousy could have required. A power of examining accounts, to censure, correct, and punish, we never, that I know of, have thought of denying to the House of Lords. It is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... on Christ, and nothing more, we are more to be pitied than all the rest of the world (1 Cor. 15:19). The idea is that if this hope in Christ which the believer has is a delusive hope, with no prospect of fulfillment in the future, the Christian is indeed in a sad state. He has chosen a life of self-denial; he will not indulge in the pleasures of the world, and if there are no pleasures in the darkness into which he is about to enter, then he has miscalculated, he has chosen a life that shall end in self-obliteration. ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... the price of strength, as any college athlete will tell you. Self-denial is the road to wealth, as any banker will tell you. Self-denial is the method of all excellencies, as all human experience will tell you. But this ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... like a dog. In terror of having to spend money, he avoided all human intercourse. He was unspeakably lonely. Hunger and self-denial made him as lean as a rope. His cheeks grew hollow, his limbs trembled in their sockets. He patched his own clothes, and to save his shoes hammered curved bits of iron to the heels and toes. His aim sustained him; Andreas ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... friends already rang in her ears like scorn, mocking her because the one thing that had made her was now stripped away. Hers was not the nature to see the other side of it—the helpful nobility of self-denial, the heroism of unselfishness, the courage that stoically faces the narrow and sordid effort whose rewards are only in the future. No, indeed!—there was only a savage resentment in her mind, the inexplicable sense that somehow she had been tricked and cheated, and that he alone ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... The more starvation there is among the people, the better. It teaches them self-denial, an excellent virtue, Baron, ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde

... up, or even alter our shape altogether. Intellectual conversation, whether grave or humorous, is only fit for intellectual society; it is downright abhorrent to ordinary people, to please whom it is absolutely necessary to be commonplace and dull. This demands an act of severe self-denial; we have to forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to become like other people. No doubt their company may be set down against our loss in this respect; but the more a man is worth, the more he will find that ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... this ambition, akin to what we see taking quite another form among ourselves, Zola does not sufficiently realize. Shocking indeed were the miserliness and materialism of such existences but for the element of self-denial, this looking ahead for those to follow after. How differently, for instance, the farm-house and its group must have appeared, but for the evident pride and hopes centred in nos Parisiens, who knows?—perhaps youths destined to attain the ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... callida junctura should never betray the workmanship of an Athenian hand; and that the national spirit of a race, who have at a later period not inaptly been compared to our self-admiring neighbours, the French, should submit with lofty self-denial to the almost total exclusion of their own ancestors—or, at least, to the questionable dignity of only having produced a leader tolerably skilled in the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... found that this caution only made him the more eager to handle it, since the prospect of an accident found an irresistible attraction. I would not let it go out of my own hands, however; and the Kohen, whose self-denial was always most wonderful to me, at once ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... is no pain. It is recommended to whom? the temperate—to those who, having formed no strong attachment to ardent spirit, can feel no great self-denial in renouncing ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... heartily wish you all the success you so well deserve, to answer the approaching enlargement of your domestic establishment. You will find a house a very devouring monster, and that the purveying for it requires a little exertion, and a great {p.096} deal of self-denial and arrangement. But when there is domestic peace and contentment, all that would otherwise be disagreeable, as restraining our taste and occupying our time, becomes easy. I trust Mrs. Terry will get her business easily over, and that ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... by the sight of pleasant faces, or dwelling enraptured on the beautiful landscape spread before it—how can the brain disengage itself to think of Liberty, won through toil and battle, only to be preserved by self-denial and moral strength? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... purely personal pleasure from the expenditure of the sum, we call our contribution to charity? We build chapels, and feed orphans, and clothe widows, and endow reformatories, and establish beds in hospitals, how? By a devout, consecrating self-denial which manifests itself in eating and drinking, in singing and dancing, at kirmess, charity balls, amateur theatricals, garden parties; where the cost of our XV. Siecle costume is quadruple the price of the ticket that admits to our sacrifice of black ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... he used to do; did not lay his arm across the back of her chair, letting it some times fall by accident upon her shoulders; did not look into her eyes with a glance which made her blush and turn away; in short, he did not look at her at all, if he could help it, and in this very self-denial lay his strength. He was waging a mighty battle with himself, and inch by inch he was gaining the victory, for victory it would be when he brought himself to think of Edith Hastings without a pang—to listen to her voice and look into her face ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... need and duty, if we would learn how to live happily, of investigating the laws of Nature, and deducing the rules of right living in the world as it is. These are very wearisome and commonplace tasks. They consist in labor and self-denial repeated over and over again in learning and doing. When the people whose claims we are considering are told to apply themselves to these tasks they become irritated and feel almost insulted. They formulate their claims as rights against society—that is, against some other ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner

... winter nights; and then ready next morning for a skating party on Walden pond; but she said her sisters had little entertainment in their youth, dressing always in the plainest manner and practising a stoical self-denial. Louisa liked to look at other people dancing, and generally it made her happy to see the young folks enjoy themselves. This shows the true woman in her. The portrait she has given of herself as Jo in "Little Women" is not ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... resignation for weakness of purpose. It was not poverty of will, it was abnegation, it was a voluntary act. My Mother, underneath an exquisite amenity of manner, concealed a rigour of spirit which took the form of a constant self-denial. For it to dawn upon her consciousness that she wished for something, was definitely to renounce that wish, or, more exactly, to subject it in every thing to what she conceived to ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... hundreds to her daughter, Archie had urged the necessity of sending the whole to young Hardy, but Daisy had refused and spent it for herself. Now, however, it was paid, and he was glad, and quite content with his uneventful life, even though, it was a life of the closest economy and self-denial for himself ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... a day," said Dickerson, with a note of self-denial in his voice that Cornelia knew was meant for her, "and I thought I wouldn't disturb you. No use making so many bites of a cherry. I got in so late last night I had to go ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... wished to come, But now you are so far from home Repent the trial. What! did you leave celestial bliss To bless us with a daughter's kiss? What self-denial! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... consequence of which Mr Robert Summers was turned over to me as my first lieutenant. We grumbled almost incessantly at our hard lot in not being allowed to render our valuable assistance more directly to the work in hand, but the reward for our enforced self-denial was nearer at hand than either of ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... is this. The one real substance and true essence of all fasting is self-denial. And we can never get past either the supreme and absolute duty of that, or the daily and hourly call to that, as long as we continue to read the New Testament, to live in this life, and to listen ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte



Words linked to "Self-denial" :   forswearing, self-control, self-abnegation, forgoing, continence, austerity, continency, nonindulgence, control, asceticism, renunciation, abstention, ascesis, selflessness, self-sacrifice, abstinence, mortification, discipline



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